The present invention relates to semiconductor structures and, more particularly, relates to semiconductor structures including graphene and a nitride gate dielectric.
Semiconductor devices are used in a variety of electronic applications, such as personal computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and other electronic equipment, as examples. Semiconductor devices are typically fabricated by sequentially depositing insulating (or dielectric) layers, conductive layers, and insulating layers of material over a semiconductor substrate, and patterning the various layers using lithography to form circuit components and elements thereon.
A transistor is an element that is utilized extensively in semiconductor devices. There may be millions of transistors on a single integrated circuit (IC), for example. A common type of transistor used in semiconductor device fabrication is a metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET).
Graphene is very promising for analog high-frequency circuits due to its high intrinsic mobility. Graphene typically refers to a single planar sheet of covalently bonded carbon atoms. In essence, graphene is an isolated atomic plane of graphite. Graphene is believed to be formed of a plane of carbon atoms that are sp2-bonded carbon to form a regular hexagonal lattice with an aromatic structure. The thickness of graphene is one atomic layer of carbon. That is, graphene does not form a three-dimensional crystal. However, multiple sheets of graphene may be stacked. A typical graphene “layer” may include a single sheet or multiple sheets of graphene.